


i couldn't even tell you how that window got smeared

by lunati0ns



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Bow Is a Good Bro, Gen, Not meant to be romantic, Somebodys gotta tell Entrapta that she was missed, and that they didnt mean to leave her, entrapta-feelings-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21865252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunati0ns/pseuds/lunati0ns
Summary: "You... You know we didn't leave you behind on purpose, right?"Suddenly, Entrapta can’t look Bow in the eyes. She turns her head, looking through the window to watch the world rush by in a blur of blue-green life and water instead of deciphering the look that he has on his face. Her hands resort messing with the buttons on her recorder, dragging her nails against the textured surface of its side. Catra's voice, the things that Beast Island told her while she was in that strange dark place, ring loudly in her ears(Some friends, they left you and they're never coming back, you didn't mean anything to them, you just aren’t suited to be with other people, there’s a reason no one likes you, there's a reason no one stays),and she falters as she struggles to speak above the overlapping echo. "W-Well... That is what I was... Yes. I did, ah, think that. Is that not...?""E-Entrapta, we thought you weredead.W-We... We had a funeral for you."...Oh. Entrapta never really thought that she'd been missed.*On the way back from Beast Island, Entrapta asks a few questions. Bow clears some things up.
Relationships: Bow & Entrapta (She-Ra)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 101





	i couldn't even tell you how that window got smeared

Entrapta is standing in a real First One’s ship, and she’s never been so excited in all her life. Except maybe when she figured out what exactly was going on with the Heart of Etheria, or when her servants surprised her with a super tiny cake for her birthday that she forgot because she was so involved in a new project, or-- or-- well, you get it.

A real _working_ First One’s ship, and she knows that it works because it’s flying and she’s in it _right now,_ she can feel it’s seamless, perfect power humming gently beneath her booted feet as they fly, hundreds of feet in the air, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been so pleased. 

She’s tingling all over. She wishes she could touch _everything,_ she wants to push every button in the room, she wants to take everything in this ship apart just to see how it works, but Bow told her (tightly, she thinks his tone was tight, and he seemed strained as he tried to keep her contained, which was foolish, really, nothing could ever hope to contain her) that they wouldn’t be able to fly back to Bright Moon if everything was in pieces on the ground. 

She’s sure she could put it back together just as quickly as she could take it apart, could even figure out how to fly without the ( _amazing, innovative, intelligently crafted, is that a real AI purely for ship flying, she wondered what else it’s capabilities were--)_ autopilot, but she won’t make too much of a fuss. She’d wait until they _got_ to Bright Moon, and all of this _the_ _world is ending_ business was over, to get to work on the huge and wonderful puzzle that this ship was. 

Until then, she would stick to darting about the ship’s floor, mumbling thoughts and observations into her recording device, looking _but not touching, don’t worry, Bow, she’s not even touching a little bit,_ only _thinking_ about what she wanted to do instead of going ahead and doing it without a care. Entrapta could manage to do that for them, at least. She wouldn’t even do anything that would distract or bother or endanger them. 

She’d carefully walk _around_ the horse, Swift Wind, who slumped in an exhausted pile on the floor, instead of leaping over him (which would be more efficient, but it's fine), would not nudge Adora out of the captain’s chair even though she _really_ wanted to see how the commands worked, and would not sniff or poke the new staff-holding and dark-haired stranger, who was still dazed and disbelieving looking as he stared into space, lost in his own thoughts. 

She’d even listen to Bow, who she… sometimes caught giving her looks she couldn’t decipher and didn’t really want to think about.

  
  
“After all,” Entrapta murmurs into her recorder, too busy studying the pastel blue holographic display of the map that the autopilot was using to get them home (it was so _accurate_ , every line and curve of the horizon diligently copied onto this display, much more accurate than the maps she remembered them using back at Bright Moon, they’d have to update all of them right away) to really think about what she was saying, “I’m lucky that they came back for me at all, so I shouldn’t… make… trouble...” She trails off, realizing what she was saying. Oh. That’s right. 

Entrapta pauses, swaying in the air a foot off the ground by her purple hair tendrils, and pushes her bug-eyed mask up to reveal her face with one hand, blinking as her eyes adjust to the difference in light. Her expression is thoughtful.

They came back for her. They really did. 

...She guesses the Heart of Etheria is really important, if they bothered to come back for her just to get her help. 

She wonders if, after they were done with the Heart of Etheria, and she wasn’t so useful anymore, they would leave her behind again. She knows Bow _said_ they wouldn’t, but…

There’s a little niggling feeling that she can’t name sitting in the bottom of her chest. An itch she can’t scratch on her own. It makes the joy of finding new tech flag and slowly taper off, until all she feels is hollow. 

Despite what she said to Bow before about the friendship not really, ah, motivating her, that… didn’t mean that it didn’t matter at all to her, really. She just wasn’t good at it. She didn’t get how it worked. Entrapta wasn’t really all that interested in things that she didn’t understand.

(Maybe-- maybe it scared her, to not know how something that seemed so integral to everyone else, something that she badly wanted for herself, truly worked.)

Entrapta’s hair tendrils lower her to the ground, and her feet hit the ground with a quiet, hollow thud. No one even looks up.

Except Bow. 

She glances over at him, leaned against the wall apart from everyone else (Everyone had gone to their own separate corners to think, she supposed), but he’s looking directly at her. 

He had told her on the island that friendship was hard work. And she was willing to do it, hard work was never something she shied away from, but… She didn’t-- understand what that work was. She didn’t know what she did wrong the first time, that was so bad that they abandoned her. Questions that had burned within her for months are suddenly rising to the surface now that she’s looking him in the face in this quiet, still moment. 

Entrapta’s feet sweep across the floor towards him of their own volition, and moments later she’s standing by his side. “Bow?”

  
  
“Uh,” Bow watched her walk over to him, but somehow the boy still seems startled to hear her speak. He blinks at her owlishly, then pushes himself off the metal wall to stand up straight. “Y-Yeah?” 

“I have… a question. Er, well, multiple questions.” She says, fiddling with the recorder in her hands. She’s-- nervous. These questions weighed so heavy on her because she could never answer them herself. She wants to record his response, so that she’ll be able to analyze it later until she understands. 

Bow looks like he’s about to answer, but she plows forward before he can. “Do you have any suggestions as to how I can avoid, ah, being left behind again? I am… Aware that I can be, ah, less than enjoyable to experience… That I am not very good at… being a friend. And I’m-- I’m aware that this is most likely why I was left with the Horde. I would like to be better at it. So I would-- I would appreciate some… critiques. On how to be better.” 

As she speaks, Bow’s expression becomes even stranger. It shifts from something confused to almost… pained? She thinks? 

"You... You know we didn't leave you behind on purpose, right?" 

Suddenly, Entrapta can’t look Bow in the eye. She turns her head, looking through the window to watch the world rush by in a blur of blue-green life and water instead of deciphering the look that Bow has on his face. Her hands resort messing with the buttons on her recorder, dragging her nails against the textured surface of it's side. Catra's voice, the things that Beast Island told her while she was in that strange dark place, ring loudly in her ears _(Some friends, they left you and they're never coming back, like you were nothing, you didn't mean anything to them, there’s a reason no one stays)_ , and she falters as she struggles to speak above the overlapping echo. "W-Well... That _is_ what I was... Yes. I did, ah, think that. Is that not...?"

"E-Entrapta, we thought you were _dead._ W-We... We had a funeral for you." 

...Oh. Entrapta never really thought that she'd been missed.

“Oh,” she says out loud, blinking and suddenly feeling like she’s been dropped in ice water. She clicks the pause button on her device. He didn’t answer her questions at all. “I was not… aware of that.” 

She’s not looking at Bow’s face, but she can hear the quiet, shaky gasp he takes in. _That was the sort of sound a person made when they were close to tears,_ she thinks. 

Entrapta feels confusion among the shock. Why would he be crying?

“Entrapta…” He says, voice trembling. She shifts her eyes a little bit, only enough that she can see that he’s reaching out one of his hands to her, now, close to her free one but not touching it yet. “Is it okay if I…?”

  
  
He was asking to hold her hand. He remembered that she didn’t like to be touched without being asked first. Still reeling, Entrapta nods distantly. 

His larger hand clasps gently around hers. Even through her gloves, she can feel that his skin is warm. For some reason, Entrapta feels her eyes sting, an ache blooming in her throat. 

“We didn’t leave you behind because you _did_ anything. We’d never do that do a friend. I promise, we thought… Mermista, Glimmer, Adora-- _everyone_ was devastated when you didn’t come back. Perfuma even--” Bow lets out a little laugh, breathy and sad, as he softly gives her hand a squeeze. “Perfuma made a statue of you to honor you. It was just a horrible accident, and it was something we regretted every day, especially after we found out that you were still alive. The only reason we didn’t send anyone to look for you was because the-- the thought of losing anyone else was unbearable. We nearly fell apart without you there.” 

“Entrapta,” Bow says, “I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

  
  
And that, the _apology,_ is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Entrapta swallows hard, trying to keep the tears she can feel beading at the corners of her eyes from falling down her cheeks. She fails. She’s crying in front of Bow, now. She hardly ever cries in front of other people, but Bow isn’t moving away, isn't treating her like she’s weird for reacting like this. If anything, judging by the noises he’s making, he’s crying too.

“O-Oh,” she says again, because it’s all she _can_ say. 

Warmth is slotting over the old wound in her chest, new information plastering over the old. _They didn’t mean to leave me,_ she thinks, raising a hand to wipe away the wet on her cheek with the heel of her glove. _It wasn’t because I was a bad friend._

“Thanks,” she sniffles, hesitatingly giving his hand a squeeze back. Bow laughs again, more genuine this time, and Entrapta feels warm inside hearing it. Less self conscious. It doesn't feel like he's laughing at her. “Thank you. Has anyone ever told you that you're very good at friendship?” 

She sneaks a look up back at his face, and the teary grin that he’s sending her way is nearly blinding. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed up her visor.

  
  
“I know,” He says proudly, but she thinks that he’s mostly joking, “I think it’s one of my best qualities.” 

Entrapta giggles, finding that she agrees, and that… she’s looking forward to a future where he’s her friend, for real. Where they all are. 

That she’s looking forward to going home. 

**Author's Note:**

> bow:  
> entrapta: oh my god. jesus fuck. your friend game is IMPECCABLE 
> 
> \-- 
> 
> [does a little dance] howdy there this is my first fic and it was totally unbetad because im easily embarrassed so i'm sorry if theres any mistakes! i don't know how to write and its especially weird to write characters that ain't my ocs! but i did it anyways cause entrapta deserves the world!! she'd probably break it in half trying to figure out how it works but i'd give it to her on a silver platter anyways. also entrapta and bow are wlw/mlm solidarity
> 
> if you leave a kudos i'll leave a kidney under yr pillow in return! if you leave a comment you get my kidney... and my heart <33


End file.
